Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds is the fifth installment in the National Intelligence
Council’s series aimed at providing a framework for thinking about the future. As with previous
editions, we hope that this report will stimulate strategic thinking by identifying critical trends and
potential discontinuities. We distinguish between megatrends, those factors that will likely occur
under any scenario, and game-changers, critical variables whose trajectories are far less certain.
Finally, as our appreciation of the diversity and complexity of various factors has grown, we have
increased our attention to scenarios or alternative worlds we might face.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Chevron, and a think tank have teamed up to launch a new project to look at how to promote “economic development, livelihoods, and reduce poverty worldwide.” This, from an oil company that refused to pay an $8.6 billion court-ordered payout for poisoning the Ecuadorian amazon rainforest, which led to the deaths of 1400 people.
Blurb: The definitive scientific facts about fracking are just one in a series of public lectures by South African and international scientists at Scifest Africa this year!
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With the fracas around proposed fracking in the Karoo reaching fever pitch, those for and against are both vocally expressing their opinion! Soon though at Scifest Africa in Grahamstown from 4 – 10 May 2011, one of the world’s leading scientific specialists on the subject will present the full “fracking” facts – as part of a fascinating lecture series by globally acknowledged authorities on various subjects at Scifest Africa this year.
Proff. Anthony Ingraffea, from Cornell University in the USA is just one of almost twenty worldwide experts on the Scifest public lecture programme. But what makes his presentation so special is not just that fracking is such a topical and hotly debated issue right now. Proff. Ingraffea will be the first person ever to give a Skype-facilitated public lecture in the fifteen year history of Scifest! And it promises to be a spectacular eye-opener, because of Proff. Ingraffea’s world renowned expertise!
Indeed, for many South Africans fracking is a recent discovery; and most of us had no idea what it was until its relatively recent arrival on news reports and in public debates. Officially known as hydraulic fracturing, fracking is used to access shale gas reserves locked in underground rock formations. This is done by drilling deepboreholes and injecting a chemical cocktail of water, sand and chemicals at extremely high pressure to crack open the rocks and release the gas.
One environmental report claims that “fracking could permanently damage the Karoo environment, cause catastrophic drinking water pollution and air pollution, be a health concern for humans and animals and cause general environmental degradation”. On the other hand, those for fracking claim that it will create jobs and that the environmental threat is ‘manageable’, albeit not guaranteed as absent. Ultimately however, a definitive scientific answer is needed to debunk the myths and fully explore the fracking facts. Proff. Ingraffea’s lecture promises to do just that!
Proff. Ingraffea is a multi-award-winning Professor of Engineering in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University and a leading authority figure on the physical effects of fracking. His research concentrates on computer simulation and physical testing of complex fracturing processes; and with his students he also completed pioneering research in the use of interactive computer graphics in computational fracture mechanics. Now, with Proff. Ingraffea’s public lecture, South Africans who are perplexed about what to believe about fracking will have direct access to a seminal presentation on the issue – whose content stems from decades of research data, intricate computer modelling and scientific insights on the subject. And it’s only happening at Scifest Africa 2011.
Proff. Ingraffea’s lecture “The Fracking Facts” will take place at 15h30 on Sunday 8 May 2011, but there are another eighteen lectures by worldwide authorities on a variety of topics throughout the week-long Scifest Africa schedule. And this public lecture series is just one of countless events, activities and exhibitions at Scifest this year – celebrating its 15th anniversary with the most comprehensive programme ever for visitors of all ages – with SASOL, Old Mutual, the Netherlands Embassy and Department of Science and Technology as sponsors!
The full programme is available on www.scifest.org.za and direct telephonic contact can be made on (046)603 1106 for all bookings. Be there and find out exactly what the fracking facts are for yourself!
The predatory practices of corporations are increasingly turning our fragile garden into a junkyard. Citizens are told by their political masters and the corporados who pay them that there is no alternative. That’s true if one’s only concern is profits. That approach is fast turning our planet into a toxic waste dump. The landscape of environmental devastation extends from radiation leaks in Japan to drilling in the Alberta tar sands to hydofracking in Pennsylvania and New York to leveling mountains in West Virginia to more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. However in India, the site of some of the worst corporate abuses, there is tremendous popular resistance. Some of the poorest people anywhere are saying, Stop the plunder. No to the war on earth.
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva is an internationally-renowned voice for sustainable development and social justice. She’s a physicist, scholar, social activist and feminist. She is Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi. She’s the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize. She is the author of many books, including “Water Wars,” “Earth Democracy,” and “Soil Not Oil.”
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